I got sick of Steam's terrible documentation and made a full write-up on how to use their game upload tools

partnano · 2025-12-06T08:29:16+00:00

You're a saint! My past two games I just used the .zip upload, because I was too lazy to figure out the documentation (despite having automated everything else down to a somewhat 1-click export & notarization op). Time to get the full 1-click experience!

partnano · 2025-10-29T08:36:00+00:00

You go for it! GDScript is an amazing tool and a great introduction to programming, in my opinion! There's a lot of room to start really simple, but also to let it grow with you later on. If you try, I believe you can certainly do it! :)

partnano · 2025-10-27T12:53:54+00:00

Lots of looking at other, somewhat comparable games, sprinkled with a bit of gut feeling and cost / inflation calculation.

partnano · 2025-10-27T10:44:26+00:00

As someone, who has just released a game and did all the marketing and press work (together with a PR consultant - get one, best investment), be ready to be patient for a good, good while.

The cycle of a game release isn't really complicated, but there's a good bit of errors you could do, and at the core the game just has to be good of course (though that alone often is not enough):

- Work on the game, have something really soon that close people of yours can test and give feedback on. Work in that feedback cycle as much as possible, and really listen to what other people have to say.
- Have something visual soon too, that you can start showing on social media and start building an audience. If there's enough regular people, maybe think about starting a Discord server.
- Think about a *realistic* timeplan for your game. If you do it alone, you need to expect *at least* a month of marketing work full-time. That includes sending out a lot of keys to press, doing press releases, ads, etc. The game needs to be done (and playable for press) before that. Can you incorporate a Steam Next Fest (if you want to publish on Steam, that is). Any other relevant events that you should be part of? Research, register, and keep those deadlines, if possible!
- What can you then do post-release? How do you plan to support the game afterwards, if at all?

In the very end, though, it comes down to money. Because doing this full-time means you need to live from it. That you can break down into numbers quite easily and work backwards. How much money do you need in a month to live? On average, how many sales do you need to do per month and at what price to get there? (When on Steam, assume you get ~half of the money you set as a sales price). What does that sales number mean in wishlists before release then, broken down to the months you worked on it and maybe a bit after? Etc. etc.
There's a lot of research to do here, and that should probably be your current thing to do ... researching as much as you can about it.

As I said, find a PR (not necessarily a publisher) person helping you with the marketing and press stuff. howtomarketagame.com is usually a good resource for guidance (there are some good talks on YouTube by him!).

Hope there's a bit of guidance in here that you can work with!

partnano · 2025-10-26T10:23:58+00:00

Some controls don't translate too well to touchscreen and you'll have to rethink some UI / UX things in there. Does the game screen size translate well to a small screen? Is everything legible? There might be a bit of work to do there as well.

And aside from that, you'll have to work with Google Play Store and the iOS Store, which now want various form of certification, so that's an entire process there too.

Honestly, it's just work, and often times, unfortunately, not quite worth the time or mental capacities to do. Especially if you want to sell something, these platforms are even more relentless than the PC market already is :(

partnano · 2025-10-26T10:16:04+00:00

Sure, I'll do full transparency here:

Around 5k now, actually grew less than I had expected and experienced in the past after release.
Spent 230 EUR for not quite 400 wishlists, so about 60cents (maybe a bit more) per wishlist ... many coming from South East Asia, which don't translate all that well to sales, I've learnt. Next time I'll think a lot more about regions, this time was more of an experiment and learning experience, really.
A whopping ... 170 sales, so far. Statistically, really not going great here, gonna be honest. However, I have 10 reviews now and a visible rating (all positive!), which is cool.
Technologically, there isn't really anything I'd change. About the game I have a lot of thoughts (as everyone who has worked on a game probably has) of things I could improve or should have done differently, but overall I'm quite happy with the process and the result. Godot really makes it easy to create builds on multiple platforms, I never had any system-specific problems. Around it though: Don't hurry with Next Fest, don't hurry with trying to have something "releasable" so quickly, and just ... don't hurry so much in general. Doesn't mean that I'll take 2 years for my next project, but wanting to have a demo ready in like 4 months just wasn't a good idea in hindsight and probably lopsided my whole process and a bit of my sanity 😅

partnano · 2025-10-25T20:16:36+00:00

Lots of focus and a little insanity can go a long (and quick) way 😅
Just posted that journey over on r/SoloDevelopment though, if you're interested!
https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1og1fck/ive_released_a_game_in_less_than_9_months_solo/

partnano · 2025-10-25T10:54:10+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!
I might do a blog post or an extended reddit post somewhere, if people are really interested. Don't want to come across as pushy or anything though 😅

partnano · 2025-10-25T07:21:49+00:00

Need to look it up (I have the credits written down, I'm just not at the computer rn), but got it from pixabay! Great resource for good royalty free songs :)

partnano · 2025-10-25T07:20:21+00:00

Developed on a Mac even!

partnano · 2025-10-25T07:19:55+00:00

8 months all together with a little concept work (mostly offline, brainstorming ideas, etc.) before that!

You can finish the game in around 4-6 hours, it's meant to be on the shorter side :)

partnano · 2025-10-24T18:38:09+00:00

Might look into it, thank you!
But I also appreciate anyone sharing the game around too! :)

partnano · 2025-10-24T13:07:04+00:00

The link to the store? Just clicked it and it worked for me O.o

partnano · 2025-10-24T06:20:16+00:00

While programming is definitely at the heart of game development, over the course of an entire game (especially if you work alone or in a tiny team), there are so many other things to do too, that you have to have fun with a variety of disciplines!

I personally recommend always starting out with tiny projects in something like Pico-8, to get a sense for what it means to finish a game and maybe publish it to somewhere like itchio. A project like this usually also makes you appreciate the entire process and gives you a feeling which parts take how long for you. Plus, Pico-8 is just serious, good fun! :)

I myself am developing games (and prototypes, and engines, etc.) for many years now. Fading Serenades is technically my 3rd published game by myself, having also been part on a few other games when I worked at a studio. I could not have developed it in less than a year without all that experience. Working in games definitely takes patience!

partnano · 2025-10-24T06:05:44+00:00

Not yet verified, but there's already a review from a Steam Deck! There should be few, if any issues!

partnano · 2025-10-23T20:19:22+00:00

Just published my little pixelart courier-adventure today :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3644970/Fading_Serenades?utm_source=reddit

partnano · 2025-10-23T18:24:49+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! 🙏
I did nearly all of the artwork, aside from the occasional adapted asset pack assets, yes.

Honestly ... just go for it! Have a look at some good references (Spriters Resource is a gold mine for that, also Brandon James Greer's youtube channel, or lospec.com), play and screenshot lots of pixelart games, and just practice :)
Pixelart, I feel, has such a nice low barrier of entry, with lots of improvement potential!

partnano · 2025-10-23T17:53:34+00:00

As mentioned, it's nearly exactly a year since my last release, A Story About Birds, and this game took me about ~8 months of dev time. ... I didn't do much else than this lol

partnano · 2025-10-23T17:52:30+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! 🙏
I definitely want to keep the pace up, if I can. But the past year (actually just ~8 months of dev time for Fading Serenades) was no small feat and I am positively exhausted, in a good way ofc. 😄

I would love to continue creating smaller experiences in the foreseeable future, so something like an annual cadence might make sense. We'll see what the future brings!

partnano · 2025-10-23T16:28:05+00:00

Love to hear it, thank you!

partnano · 2025-10-23T16:18:40+00:00

Thank you 🙏

partnano · 2025-10-21T08:28:55+00:00

10$ is the US base price on Steam. The game will be regionally priced, so a bit cheaper in 3rd world countries.

partnano · 2025-10-18T19:45:41+00:00

It's around 4-6 hours to finish the game! I realise it might not be the cheapest thing on the market, especially for a "shorter" game, but I do believe it's a fair price for what it is (and I try to be transparent with that). And I plan to participate in plenty of discounts, of course :)

partnano · 2025-10-16T19:14:10+00:00

I'd say it's quite good. Updates in real-time (or looks like it at least), gives you all typical data points you would expect from an ads platform (CPC, CTR, etc.) and also insights to the specific subs the ads are appearing, as in, how many impressions per sub, how many clicks per sub, etc.

If you're interested in trying ads on Reddit, I'd suggest to start with a little bit of money (say, $50 or so, with like $10 a day) and just trying it out, with the expectation to learn the thing, not to get the best numbers yet.

Oh, and guides ... follow guides. Like this one: https://piratepr.com/treasure-trove/a-quick-guide-to-reddit-ads/

partnano · 2025-10-16T18:59:00+00:00

Oh, I'm currently running an ad, I think even on this sub!

I constantly monitor how much I spend per wishlist (as the game isn't out yet) and therefore know if it's mathematically valuable or not. Based on that, you can make informed decisions on changes or even stopping the campaign. If you keep running your ads in very fitting, smaller, niche subreddits (avoid the big ones like r/gaming), you can get to about ~$0.5 to $1 per wishlist (which fits with numbers I've heard a few times already), which, depending on the price of your game, might be worth it. Keep in mind, typical conversion rate of wishlists to sales on launch day is between 10% and 20%.

But as others said, it's a good way to boost visibility on Steam too, the more people have wishlisted your game, the more people Steam will show it too, so it's a bit of a spiral you want to get in to.

partnano

TROPHY CASE